The vestibular system detects the position and motion of the head in space. It works in conjunction with the visual system and the proprioceptive system to unconsciously coordinate posture, motor responses and eye movements. The sensory end-organs responsible for this detection are located on either side of the head and consist of two entities which detect static head position, the utricle and the saccule as well as three semicircular canals that detect angular acceleration. Hair cells, are the mechanoreceptors responsible for converting mechanical stimuli into signals recognized by the Central Nervous System (CNS). Each hair cell type and end organ is specialized to its particular function and frequency response. The work being presented here attempts to describe some of the components responsible for specializing the semicircular canals to respond to acceleration, with special emphasis on the electrical properties of the hair cells and the modulatory function of the efferent system. It was hypothesized that a better understanding of the response properties of the end organ would help in revealing a more precise role of the efferent system. Most of the work presented here was done with the above hypothesis as the premise and so the focus of the work is on a study of the response properties of the end organ, with an emphasis on the electrophsyiologic properties of the hair cells. Often the global implications of a piece of work can be lost in the specifics of an experiment. Hopefully, the organization and presentation of this work will allow for both a critical analysis of the data as well as an understanding of how the signal processing occurring at the vestibular end organ is achieved